Sensational
by ProfAT
Summary: If you stare into the abyss, it will stare back. Instead, try to hear the abyss. Sniff the abyss. Lick the abyss. Grope the abyss. It would probably appreciate the variation. Anyways, Shuuhei explores the concept of oneness with the world by depriving himself of sight. And by "the world" I also mean "Renji". And by "oneness" I also mean "sex".


**Author's note: I literally could not think of a summary.**

The first time you find yourself wondering what it would be like to be devoid of sight, you are a child, and you have just receiving the shocking but stellar news that you are going to survive. You had just about surrendered the possibility for such in the grasp of that hollow- which was from your own, small, inexperienced perspective, a behemoth of a creature, larger than any living thing you had witnessed before. A monster that followed you in your nightmares for years on end, and at the time you never considered that it would one day be chased away from your mind by much bigger fears.

Your heart beats faster when your mind conjures the beast's image. The memory alone is enough to make you shake. Later you would realize that it was not so much a fear of the hollow specifically as much as a fear of death. To be afraid of a vast, unknown, impossible ending, through which the hollow is merely a vehicle for. But you are too young to fathom death without a face, and so it is the memory of the hollow that haunts you, with the great, terrifying void of inexistence lurking vaguely behind it.

What sooths you is the memory of the hollow's destroyer, your hero who saved you in your time of peril. And while yes, his image stuck powerfully in your mind, the numbers inked on his chest burned into your brain, it was something else that struck a powerful chord as well. The wind his sword manipulated, so fine and yet so powerful, that tore the creature into pieces. As focused as it was, you still felt the air move around you, the hard tugs of currents biting at your skin and pulling at your clothes.

Months after the event, you imagine you can still feel it the same. You close your eyes and immerse yourself in the sensation of the wind swirling around you. The independent, impersonal animation of the air carving its own path around, not within, the rest of the world. It sends shivers up your spine and you swear you've never been so acutely aware of something before in your life.

The second time you fear you will be _forced_ to experience being without your sight, or half of it anyways. Only a few weeks beforehand, blood was dripping down your face, more blood than you had ever imagined your body capable of producing. It cakes the roots of your hair, your skin, and your first thought is that it's getting into your eye, obscuring your vision. Only later, after everyone was safe and the adrenaline had passed, you found you had been partly correct. In addition to the wounds you received that marred your face, you had also lost all vision in your left eye.

Confined to the Fourth Division, you were promised a quick recovery. Their healers could do amazing things, they said. Eyes were no problem, especially such shallow damage. You were lucky, they would say before realizing their error and quickly leave you, staring into your lap with your good eye and longing for the friends that you lost.

Though a quick recovery you were promised indeed, their definition of quick and your definition were obviously very different. Your healing process seemed to be unbearably slow, and there was still schoolwork to finish. And though you insisted that you were just fine as you were, you were quick to become frustrated at how difficult simple visual tasks were when your vision was only functioning at half capacity.

Everything became lopsided, your entire world sliced in half. You could no longer trust your own depth perception to guide you from one step to the next down the stairs, or your senses to immediately inform you when someone who found your injury amusing was teasing you from your blind side.

To your own surprise, you found certain activities much easier when you ignored your sight all together. Your eye became something you couldn't fully rely on, but the rest of you worked just fine. Eyes shut, you could run your hand over the wall and recognize the halls of your dorm. You could feel the heat on your skin and know that sunshine was peeking through the open curtains. You could smell blossoming flowers and rainwater and freshly cut grass and tell that spring was coming. It felt like a different level of existence, as if you were more one with the world around you.

The third time it's because of this odd, incredible man, who is capable of taking your fascination and making it applicable. You found it a little strange when Captain Tousen made no comment about your appearance. The inquiries about your scars and the suggestion that you were intoxicated when you got your tattoos never came. When spoken to, he would politely turn to face your direction but the thick goggles he wore prevented you from making eye contact. Only when you spotted him at his desk, engrossing himself in a document by dragging his fingertips over the small bumps and dimples printed on the paper did you even realize all these habits had a common correlation.

He amazes you. Without even trying he can function better than most seeing people. More than once, he asks you how the magazine is coming along because he can smell the ink from the printing press on your hands, or remanded you for staying at work all night because he heard you snoring at your desk from down the hall when he came in that morning. The way he fought was beyond incredible, his movements so fluid and perfectly timed you would never say he was at a disadvantage against his opponent.

In time, he taught you how to perfect your ability to sense spiritual energy, how to feel each and every individual person down to their soul. For the first time you experienced people like you had never experienced them before, being able to read them down to the core of their very being and tell them apart like different colors or sounds.

On the night after Tousen left, you didn't sleep. You stayed awake, reaching out to all the spiritual signatures out there, waiting as if that one specific spirit might suddenly appear again if you looked hard enough.

The fourth time, it's a different man who makes you wonder. A man who was overwhelming enough just from his appearance without the use of any of your other senses whatsoever. You were used to getting stares, but even your unusual visage didn't capture people's attention the way his did. His stature, tall and broad, and infuriating to you whenever you stood close enough to realize he had look down at you to meet your eyes. His tattoos that were too flashy for your taste, too complex, although something of them felt inspired and made you suspect there was a story behind them just like your own. The color of his hair, which was impossibly bold and bright, like the color of a poisonous animal warning you not to come to close.

Worst though was his smile, the cocky, smug grin that showed too many teeth, thus making him look like a wolf baring his fangs. A vicious predator lying in wait to bite your hand.

At first this was all you saw in him, the qualities that overpowered his more subtle traits. You didn't see the softness in his eyes when he laughed, or the way his shoulders tightened when he was nervous. You didn't see these until sometime later.

But you _felt_ the way his reiatsu felt, which was warm and comforting like feeling the last rays of a sunset before dusk. And you could smell a distinct, metallic scent about him as if he spent too many hours training with too few breaks in-between. And, most captivating of all was his voice, and the way it turned from a subtle rasp to a deep growl when he got excited. And you felt yourself falling for him before you could think of a way to un-feel it.

"Why are you closing your eyes?" Renji asks, and when you open one eye you see the corner of his lip twitching up in an amused smirk.

You shut your eye again, keeping your face completely neutral. You hear his breathing better now, and the warmth of his hot breath into your ear. "Give me your bandana."

"Um, 'scuse me?"

"You heard me."

The soft sound of fabric against fabric proceeds, followed by a rough, battle-worn hand tenderly pressing the cloth into your hand. Without looking, you bring it up to your face and tie it firmly over your closed eyes. The bandana smells like him. It makes you smile a little, as does the way you can feel him tense when you say, "Kiss me."

Instead, Renji takes his good, sweet time, the teasing bastard. He leans in, close enough for you to feel the heat of this body, the inhale and exhale on your lips that tell you he's hovering just centimeters away and it's _maddening. _The callous pads of fingertips touch your face, traveling down the grooves of your scar to under your chin, and you refrain from automatically opening your mouth when he drags Renji drags his thumb over your bottom lip.

Impatiently, you find his hip and grasp it, and he's warm enough to feel like the touch of his skin burns your hand through the layer of his clothes. His laughter at your willfulness is rich and throaty, and you open your mouth to repeat your command when he closes the distance between the two of you.

He kisses you, hard and firm and almost more of a crash than a caress. He pulls away, like he's embarrassed by his own roughness and you chase him, dragging him into another kiss once more, softer. Twice, and it's almost gentle. It's like being struck by lightning, an electric shock going up and down your body. You raise your hand to his face and he seems to like that, angling his head into your touch, and you trace your fingers over the side of his face until you find where his jawbone connects under his skin, can feel it shift and move as he kisses you.

Ever so slightly, Renji pulls back. You protest the action until you hear him breathing something, softer than a whisper, against your lips. Your own name, uttered like it's a secret, a precious treasure. Knowing Renji, it could very well be the quietest thing he's ever said, and no one but you will ever hear it.

You grab- no, _clutch_ at Renji's body, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. You smooth your hands down his back, feeling the shift in his tendons, the constant, tight, heavy working of his muscles, and it almost like there's too much of him to feel. You press him closer to you, wrapping your legs around his hips because it feels like no part of him and you shouldn't be touching right now, you want to feel it all, you want _everything._

His face nuzzles into your neck, and he makes a sound like purring into your skin before his fingers fumble at the clasp of your choker, exposing your neck for him to nip and mouth at.

One of your hands move up from his back, across his neck to grope blindly at Renji's hair. You struggle for the pin keeping it in place and when you pull it, the metal warps in your hand. That is probably a good indicator that you bent it and Renji will bitch about it later until you promise to fix it. His hair spills over his shoulder and tickles you where it brushes the exposed skin of your bicep. You grasp a fistful of the wild strands and bring it up to your face to breath in the spicy, earth scent of his shampoo, feel the shocking softness against your lips.

You meant to only touch his hair, run your fingers through it and let the sensations slide through you, but perhaps your grip was too tight and your pull too hard because Renji's instincts start to kick in. His hands grab at your waist, shallow nails biting into your flesh. His thigh nudges between your knees and presses a fantastic pressure against you when he pushes up that makes your body jerk and draws a hiss through your teeth at the sudden friction. Your body tightens, and you tug Renji's hair in warning but that seems to do the exact opposite of discouraging him if the keening noise he makes is any indication.

Growing impatient again, your hands go for the collar of Renji's shihashuko and yank it in the general direction of down until you're certain it falls off his torso, down his abdomen to hang where his sash is tied around his hips. The iteration that you are blindfolded is re-established as you grope clumsily at his body- you usually use Renji's tattoos as a map, playing with their pattern across the lines down his chest. You're a little lost without them, blindly feeling for the hard planes of his pectorals, going down over the ridges of his nipples where you know he's most sensitive and you feel his body arch into your touch when and moan into your collarbone when you give them a sharp twist. Down, down to the toned flesh of his abdomen, where you feel the uneven, shaky expand and retraction of his breathing.

Renji's hands make a hasty tug at your own clothing, and you suspect, with some amusement, that from the urgency of his pulling he's growing frustrated. Still, he isn't the one with the bandana over his eyes, so it takes much less time for him to undress you than you to undress him, and he gives you less than a moment's notice before you feel him pulling and untying your sash to remove the rest of your clothes.

The heat from Renji's body is unbearable now, his skin getting more slippery with sweat. You bet he's glistening with it right now, but you satisfy yourself with pulling him closer to you, pressing an open kiss to his shoulder, licking the junction where it connects to his collarbone and tasting salt. Your hands still re-exploring his chest, you pinch one of his nipples between your knuckles and are rewarded by a string of curses.

"Fuck, wait here a sec." Renji says, wriggling out of your grasp, much to your discontent. There's a muffled sound of movement, shuffling, things being moved and smaller things getting thrown about. Moments of his pass, though they seem to stretch on to infinity from your perspective, in the dark and fate unknown until he returns.

He backs you up until your back hits the wall, his hands groping at your thighs. "Now we're in business!" He growls in satisfaction, spreading your legs until you have to hook your arms around his neck for balance. Something warm and wet prods between your legs, making you gasp. Renji's fingers, snaking around your backside and searching for your entrance. The feeling of being penetrated, stretched, filled. You kiss him, nipping his lip urgently, anticipating what comes next. Renji's digits twist inside you, making your concentration go fuzzy and your senses kick even more into overdrive.

At once Renji's fingers are gone, leaving what can only be described as an uncomfortable emptiness in their wake. It only lasts for a moment though, because Renji's hands grip your ass and lift up, taking all your weight as the ground disappears from under you. Back against the wall, your ankles hook around Renji's back for balance, and you have to trust your internal sense of position to know exactly when he's lowering you and the uncomfortable emptiness is filled.

He gives you time to adjust- the gentleman- before rocking his hips into you and this time you do not so much hear yourself moaning or cursing or possibly babbling as much as are aware that your mouth is moving and there's some kind of shaky, inconsistently pitched noise like static in the background that you realize must be your voice. You've seen this image before, and your mind replays images of Renji's scarred, tan skin slicked with sweat, his eyes glittering and narrow in concentration, his mouth hanging open and heaving air in and out. You focus now on your other senses, mainly on the growing shudder from his body that tells you he's drawing close, and the tightening in your own belly that helpfully informs you that you won't be lasting much longer, either.

Your back presses harder against the wall as Renji frees one of his hands. His grip around your cock strikes you as sudden, his pumping up and down fast and uneven, and you share this with him by murmuring broken obscenities into his ear, peppered by an occasional bite to his shoulder, a raking of your nails down his back. You can feel your body taunt with pressure, coiled like a fucking spring.

You lose it first, shuddering out of your control, a noise suspiciously like wail as you release. Your entire world fades aside from the very fleeting reminders that you're still a conscious entity in a physical body, like Renji's teeth sinking into your shoulder, the hot something running down your fingers that is probably Renji's blood from where you scratched him up, something dripping out of your ass and down your leg as he rides out his own orgasm with a strained sob and a violent bucking.

You feel him calm down, feel yourself sliding against the walls down to the floor as his grasp weakens. Hear his broken breaths huffing, gasping in harmony with your heavy panting. You are aware of this person inside and out, beyond the skin-deep. You put the picture of the world together in your mind from what you sense right now, and all you can picture is him.


End file.
